Penny and Rick have their own high-powered version of this partnership, though I’ve never really witnessed the joy in it. They both give a hundred and ten percent, and they’re focused on the same things. They just don’t seem all that focused on each other. I got marriage half right. I gave a hundred and ten percent and Ben gave nothing, leaving us at an average of just fifty-five percent, which is a fail in pretty much anyone’s book.
At the cabin, my dad takes my kids out in the boat every morning to water-ski and ride inner tubes. Arthur doesn’t leave my dad’s side, like he thinks he’s the last man in the world. Which he may be.
In the afternoons we play cards and nap and talk about dinner. I take walks and cry, but it’s less raw here. It’s actually a Leo-free zone. No one mentions him, and I don’t have to walk through the room where he kissed me for the first time. I don’t have to see the pity in Mr. Mapleton’s eyes every time I need vacuum cleaner bags.
Or the rage in Mickey’s. Mickey has taken this whole thing personally, like he himself was seduced by Leo and then abandoned. “He said he was staying,” he says, incredulous. “He was going to buy the Big Green Egg and we were going to cook ribs.” Those ribs were Mickey’s forever. I totally get it. We were all duped.
Mom and I are in the kitchen cleaning up the dinner dishes, while my dad and the kids take their food comas to the TV room. “You’re awfully thin,” she starts.
“Am I?”
“It’s not a happy thin either. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. The same. Maybe running too much.”
“No word from Ben?”
“He’s not coming back, Mom.”
“What an asshole,” she says, and we both laugh. My mom saves her swears for special occasions.
“I don’t miss him,” I say. “I’m really much happier without him.”
“That’s good. And all the excitement with the movie and that movie star staying with you, that must have been a real pick-me-up.”
“Yeah, it was something.”
“Mom! It’s Leo!” Bernadette screams from the TV room, and I drop the glass I’m drying.
Mom and I run over, and there he is on TMZ, walking out of a club with Naomi, his arm around her shoulders. I can’t look away, but I can feel my mom watching me. “Oh dear,” she says.
The next day she wants to hike. “Tell me,” she says before we’re even out of the driveway.
“Long version or short version?”
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” she says.
“I think I only have the energy for the short version. We had this big romance, like really big. He got called away to film a movie, and I haven’t heard from him since. And clearly, he’s not dead.”
“That sounds like some kind of a fantasy, like something Penny would have cooked up.”
“If you’re trying to say it doesn’t sound like me, I couldn’t agree more. It’s like I suffered temporary insanity.”
“Sometimes that’s what love is,” she says.
* * *
? ? ?
Penny arrives the next day with her family, and as I watch them file out of her square of a Mercedes G-Wagon, two adults followed by two matching children, another square, I am acutely aware that my family is a triangle.
My kids appear out of nowhere and throw themselves into the twins. Ethan and Maxwell are nine and slide in perfectly between Arthur and Bernadette. Whenever he’s with his cousins, Arthur becomes almost manly. He concocts feats of strength as games, and I suspect it’s because they’re the only kids he’s ever known who are less athletic than he. As a result, Penny thinks Arthur’s kind of rough, which cracks me up.
“Hey, Pen. Hey, Rick,” I say, hugging them both. Penny holds me for an extra few beats to convey her love and support and sympathy for how pathetic my life is. I am grateful to receive the sentiment without having to hear the words. Rick points to his AirPods indicating that he’s on a call. Rick’s pretty much always on a call.
“You’re thin,” Penny says, putting her arm around me and leading me away from Rick.
“I’ve heard.”
“So no word?”
“Not a one,” I say.
“If you want, you can let this go,” she says. “Because I hate him enough for both of us.” Penny is fierce, and my whole life I have loved having her on my side. I want to borrow her hatred and inject it into my heart. Anger would feel better than what I’m feeling.